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Tuesday, December 8, 2015

MADANI: Riders Adding John Murphy To the Fold

Here is the latest from Arash Madani who has showed today why he is the best in this country when it comes to getting CFL news.

On a side note, have you ever seen anything in Riderville like the last 48 hours. What's next?

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It’s the end of an era‎ with the Calgary Stampeders.

Sportsnet has learned that John Murphy, the assistant general manager of the Stampeders who has spent the better part of the past decade working for the franchise in football operations, is headed to Saskatchewan to join Chris Jones’s front office.

Murphy is expected to be a vice president in the new Roughriders hierarchy, which has undergone a massive overhaul in the past 48 hours since Jones was named general manager and head coach. The previous coaching staff has already been wiped out and, as Sportsnet first reported Tuesday, the club has parted ways with Craig Smith, who had been the director of player personnel and ‎Canadian scouting.

Murphy had actually interviewed for the general manager job in Saskatchewan last week before Jones ultimately received the offer on Sunday. He has been one of the few available hot candidates for top football executive roles league-wide in recent years, credited with “finding” many of today’s CFL stars. But Murphy has been unable to land a GM position and the belief in league circles is that he feels he needs to leave Calgary and have success in another market to make himself a more enviable candidate for future GM openings.

Jones and Murphy worked together in Calgary and both are astute personnel men. Sources told Sportsnet that Jones had been clear in the interview process with the Riders that he wanted to bring in his own people to run the football operation, and was assured he would. To wit, the championship Eskimos ‎staff of 2015 will mirror the Roughriders assistant coaching group of 2016.

Jeremy O'Day had been the Riders interim GM and he, like Murphy, was a finalist for the top job. It is believed O'Day's position remains safe in the organization, even with the Murphy addition. O'Day is close with Saskatchewan president Craig Reynolds, and will add to the administrative, scouting and personnel requirements needed to run a football operations department.

WOW! I knew Jones would turn things around here, but he is now dictating what is happening in other organizations. Calgary and Edmonton have been weakened big time. I still think Jones is a little sketchy, but he obviously showed Reynolds what his game plan was and he is accting on it.

Jones isn't trying fix major injuries with band-aids. There will be more coaching moves to come. The real blood letting is going to happen when free agency arrives. He seen deficiencies and is starting to fix them. He has shown your either with him or against him..take your pick. Some familiar names will be moving on and some moving in. A lot of the people who have worked with him seem to love him, so I doubt it's about the money at all. Probably more about loyalty. I don't view him as being any more sketchy than those who were here in recent past, maybe a bit more successful.

So Craig Reynolds ignores the Regina media advice and conducts a search rather than annoint the guy the media supports. Somehow or another he ends up landing the top three candidates. It doesn't get any better than that.

About Me

This is mainly a Regina sports blog, but you will get information and thoughts from me on a number of topics some that aren't even sports related. You can see me on Access 7 in Regina co-hosting a local one hour sports program called Locker Talk highlighting Regina sports. You can hear me reading afternoon news and sports on 620 CKRM in Regina along with co-hosting "Sportscage" on same station from time to time. I'm also a part of Sask Roughriders broadcast on CKRM and I write feature articles for the Riders on their website Riderville.com.